The present invention relates to a method of operating a plant for the treatment of containers as well as to a plant for the treatment of containers. Various plants for the treatment of containers are known from the prior art. In this way, fillers are known which fill containers, such as for example plastic or glass bottles, with liquids. In addition, so-called blow moulding machines or stretch blow moulding machines are also known which shape plastics material pre-forms into plastics material containers.
In this way, EP 1 471 008 A1 describes a method and a system for monitoring a packing or filling procedure. In this case first data information is detected which identify the packing or a packing material used for forming the packing as well as second data information which is used for describing the machine parts.
In addition, a container treatment plant, which has a detection device for detecting properties of a container to be treated, as well as a comparator device for comparing the detection results of the detection device with a nominal value of the container are known from the Patent Application No. 10 2009 040 977.7—not yet published—of the Applicants. The subject matter of this disclosure is hereby also made the subject matter of the following description by reference in its entirety.
In particular, when changing the programming of machines in the beverage industry over to a different type, for example to a new type of bottle, this is usually carried out on the machine by the user or fitter. In this case a previously applied type (which is available as a data set) is selected in the menu and charged. A data set of this type contains for example mechanical setting values on the machine which the user obtains in a manner indicated for the change-over.
It is also known to manage the types of individual machines centrally with a superordinated management of the types, for example in an LMS (line-management system), and to transfer them in a manner corresponding to a pending manufacturing order to the machines in question in each case.
In this case, however, the problem arises that the materials used also influence the parameter settings on the machine in situ. If for example a plastics material pre-form with different material properties, for example with additives for bonding oxygen in the beverage, is used, experience shows that this has an influence upon the setting of the heating and thus upon the heating parameters on the blow moulding machine. The nature of the surface of the bottle (roughness or coefficient of friction) can also be influenced and, as a result, the behaviour of the container can change during the treatment in a labelling machine or in a packer run-in. As shown by experience, the apparently similar materials of different manufacturers can also behave in a very different manner. The causes can be the manufacturing process used by the manufacturer for example for the plastics material pre-form, the process times set or other parameters.
This leads to a manual adaptation of the machine parameters used becoming necessary on the machines in a filling plant. This adaptation results in losses in the form of machine stoppages for the necessary new settings, losses in quality and thus a loss of product and packing material.
On the other hand, not only one type of product is produced in most filling plants. These plants are in fact designed in such a way that only one type is in production at one point in time, but it is possible to change over to a different type in a simple manner. The number of different production types and the time intervals between the refittings can vary very widely in this case.
The types of production themselves comprise several categories, such as for example the packaging shape, the packaging colour, the container shape, the container colour, the nature and the decoration of the closure or even the number, the shape and the decoration of the labels on the containers. In this case it is not necessary for all the machines of a plant or the parameters thereof to be dependent upon all the categories. In the case of labelling machines in particular, there are frequently a very large number of provision variants in practice. In this case in particular, the categories of the container shape, the closure shape and the provision of labels are relevant. The provision of labels can in turn be divided into sub-categories, such as for example the usable volume, the product and country-specific contents.
If therefore a refitting to a different type has to be carried out in the prior art, as well as mechanical refitting operations the production staff also have to set the previously set production type of the machine. This can be carried out for example by a superordinated co-ordinating control (Scada, MES) or directly on the machine operating means. The choice from a list on a touch-screen display has become established as customary for this input.
If, however, the number of production types is very large (for example the number of different provisions in a labelling machine is frequently several hundred) in practice, then from experience the type is also changed in relatively small portions of time. In this case the choice from a list is complex, time-consuming and prone to error for the operating staff. Since the types differ in part only in one criterion the texts of the type identifiers are frequently long and very similar. As a result of the limited area of the display only a small portion of the list is visible at any time, and the remaining parts have to be indicated in an awkward manner by scrolling through the list.